Friday, 13 April 2018

We first discovered J.T Studio back in 2015/16 after seeing a photo of the Monkey King figure. Allan, in particular, is a huge fan of all Journey to the West related property and was eager to track down one of these figures for our collection. Based on the information we'd gathered - J.T Studio was based in Taiwan, and the online store no longer had any of Monkey King still in stock. We were gutted, but weren't going to let that stop us. We decided to look around online, to no avail.

I took a chance and emailed J.T Studio through the website, and luckily enough the owner: Jei Tseng, got back in touch with me. He had a small number of figures left, that just weren't currently listed on the site. I quickly arranged to purchase the Monkey King W figure to put away for Allan's Christmas that year.

Since then, we've been glad to keep on supporting Jei's releases and are always eagerly awaiting new announcements. When Wang was revealed to be the next release in the Street Mask line, and subsequently put up for preorder, we had to add him (and Jians, which comes as part of the Deluxe Version) to our collection. You can still find him avalilable here.

First off, the packaging is phenomenal. All of the boxes in the Street Mask line match up beautifully, and look gorgeous as a backdrop for the figures. I desperately need to get more shelves ASAP as I want a dedicated J.T Studio shelf now that we have so many figures.

Limited to 399, and individually numbered - ours is number 192/399. All of the inner artwork is all done by Jei Tseng also, and really adds to how gorgeous the overall package is.

Even the shipping boxes are identifiably from J.T Studio, which I love - custom shipping boxes just add another layer of "premium" in my eyes.

Inside, we have Wang as well as a bunch of different accessories. Wang's body is fully "tattooed" and he has a bunch of clothing on (all real material) that you can swap about to customise how you want him to look (ie, wear the hoodie without the jacket, or go fully topless, your call!). He also has a Jians head mask, which is awesome as this can be swapped around with the standalone Jians figures. He also has 3 different pairs of hands, to change out for different poses, as well as a cap and backpack, 3x Kendamas (which are a type of Japanese toy, but that he has as a kind of weapon) and two holsters for the chunkier ones and of course, the stand.

Wang can be displayed as he is in the box, without the mask - or as shown below - with it. The kendama can be a little fidgety to place between the teeth and his face, but looks really nice when done properly. You can also clearly see the different textures in the fabrics used, between the satiny material of the jacket, to the stretchier cottony material of the hoodie.

So much time and effort has clearly gone into the production of these figures, from all of the individual pieces right down to the meticulous clothing (with working zippers!) and tattoos right across his full body,. Everything is to an extremely high standard.

The stand is made up of a few separate layers, in order to get this stunning effect. And the post for Wang to rest against slots through to hold them all together. Unfortunately, before taking these pictures I failed to notice that I did not line all of the base pieces up properly so there is a slight overlap at the edge (which I promise isn't there if you line them up correctly haha!)

There is just so much unbelievable detail in Jei Tseng's work, and I am thrilled to have found J.T Studio when I did as I definitely would not have wanted to miss any of these gorgeous figures.

Jians, which although part of the Deluxe Version, comes in a separate box (but contained within the custom shipping box together) is really intricately detailed. He has a sword which can be placed in his mouth (or have this separate if you prefer).

His head is removable as mentioned above, and can be swapped out with the head inside the Wang box, which is used as a mask.

As a separate purchase, I also bought the Valentine Exclusive version of Jians, which is a different colourway of the above. This one has pink detailing, instead of blue, but together they go really well with Wang as his mask is a mixture of both.

And same again, the head can be removed to swap out with either Wang's mask, or another Jians head.

Here's Wang alongside his two Jians.

Overexposed his face a little here, whoops.

I feel like this could be a candid shot from some trap music rapper's Insta., haha.

And of course, the Jians with their heads swapped over. Couldn't exactly tell you about it without following through!

Here's our J.T Studio collection at present. There's a few more on the way/preordered, and definitely plan on keeping this going. More unboxing posts to follow soon, as can't wait to show you everything that Jei has to offer!